In reading the various news bits over the past few weeks, I noticed a trend — an assertion born of certitude and used to justify injustice, cloaked in the trappings of open mindedness. It is as Pope Benedict the XVIth warned, the tyranny of Relativism on display.

In Florida, a teacher at a university had students write down the name of Jesus and directed them to stomp on it. The school disciplined the one student (a Mormon) who refused but later retracted and apologized for the lesson in general. Applying relativism, the teacher (even if I think he is a knucklehead), may teach as he likes — and it is the critical thinking student who must discern, \”This is a crapola sandwich, I\’m not eating it.\” The University should have applauded both for getting right answers and asserting their independent understandings of the world. The entire story illustrates the problem with relativism. At some point, someone gets to assert a truth while proclaiming there is no Truth, and those who hear it, if they\’re students or employees or tax payers or people do not have the power or influence to shout louder, get to just deal with the consequences of trying to live out the newly minted untenable reality.

It is the madness demanding all views be tolerated. It isn\’t intellectually honest but it sounds great. If all views have weight and there is no truth, than there can be no bigotry, because there is no truth. If there is no truth, then the distressed or offended have no greater weight than the offender, as both perceptions/feelings — the one of hate and the one of love, the one of not minding, and the one of thinking something is utterly stupid and evil, have equal standing. Laws become pure elements of force pushed and pulled by public opinion, ergo we have emotional mob rule in our public discourse.

Example #1: A comedian tweets \”God bless Pope Francis.\” The Twitterverse goes into a tizzy. He is immediately flogged by the atheists watchdogs who can\’t have a member of the entertainment industry say anything about the Catholic Church that is complimentary, or use the name God without one of the seven words you can\’t say afterwards. It grew to such a fervorous pitch that he deleted his tweets. Lesson learned. Shout loud enough and long enough, and those who think differently, will shut up and wash their hands of the whole thing. We are a society turning into a mob that clamors for blood (emotionally) whenever we sense it is possible.

Example #2: A public school teacher protests Planned Parenthood, and is being dismissed for speaking out in school. If we really are an open minded society, then informed opinions of all types ought to be allowed to exist even in the public square, even in the public schools. Theoretically, the pro-choice and pro-life position ought be presented side by side, like two differently colored chess pieces, or apples and oranges. The children ought to determine which one they will pick in an open-minded tolerant all things are equal society. However, that is not the reality. The reality of whether abortion is a good law, let alone a good action, cannot be discussed. Cue the silence on the Gosnell trial for killing live children via severing their spines by the mainstream media. As if to underscore that reality, the UN is redefining torture so that abortion will be named a \”Human Right.\” Thus all nations who restrict abortion in any way for any reason at any time, are engaged in torture by cruelly not allowing women to destroy their infants and others to profit from the willful killing of unborn children.

Example #3: The same blunt bullying approach is being used to push same sex marriage. In Maryland, a Gallaudet adminstrator was placed \”on leave\” for signing a petition in support of marriage. The names of all who signed that petition were outed by an activist newspaper to help peer pressure people into silent acceptance or punish those who disagreed with public disapproval. The title of hater is slung on any person who speaks out against gay marriage like a scarlet H and all who name the offender as a hater can count themselves as unhaters. Pass out the stones for the unhaters. Feel free to throw as many as you like. Remember, Jesus said judge not. She judged. Fire away!

We cannot have dissent, it interferes with our ability to be tolerant.

We are being manipulated by noise and by silence so that any moral voice that is not modern thinking is eliminated. Mandatory acceptance is being forced when an issue is declared neutral and forbidden to be argued against. The Christian/Catholic/moral voice is being eliminated from the public square in favor of an open-minded, tolerant, neutral-on-everything policy. The slippery slope argument in all things should be dismissed as always fallacious. Let\’s all jump on a moral chute that constantly redefines the new modern normal as we go. At some point, we will have to be like the Mormon student who walked out of the classroom lest we join the crowd that yelled, \”Crucify him!\” Or we will have to hope that once the cock crows three times, we recognize ourselves and weep.

I am a Catholic writer, happily married, and mother to ten children. Past publications include the Catholic Digest, Faith and Family Live, National Catholic Register, the Catholic Standard, East Texas Catholic and the Washington Post. I have a regular column at www.catholicmom.com and also a blog, Chocolate For Your Brain, with the I don't know what I'm doing blog address of http://www.sherryantonettiwrites.blogspot.com. My first foray into fiction is slated to hit the internet in May of 2013, The Book of Helen.

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